Blogs

1. Introduction: Why It’s Time to Rethink Themes

Most Liferay customers upgrading from older versions (like DXP 7.1–7.4) face recurring challenges with traditional themes—performance bottlenecks, complex upgrades, and high maintenance costs.
With the latest Liferay DXP 2025 releases, a new approach has emerged—theme-less architecture, powered by Style Books, Theme CSS Client Extensions, Master Page templates, and JS Client Extensions.
This modern approach makes your portal lighter, faster, and upgrade-friendly, while boosting SEO performance and Core Web Vitals.

2. What Is Theme-less Architecture in Liferay?

In the traditional model, a Liferay Theme WAR controlled portal layout, styles, and scripts. Every upgrade required theme adjustments or redevelopment.

Theme-less architecture removes the dependency on a monolithic theme. Instead, presentation layers are handled through:

• Style Books: Define color palettes, typography, spacing, and visual tokens directly from the UI.

• Theme CSS Client Extensions: Provide site-level CSS overrides without packaging a theme.

• Master page templates: Master page templates define common elements (e.g., headers and footers) for pages using fragments

• JS Client Extensions: Inject modular JavaScript for behavior and interactivity.

• Fragments and Page Templates: Deliver layout and reusable UI blocks.

Together, these replace traditional theme functions and give developers modular, component-driven control over the frontend.

3. Why Move Away from Traditional Themes?

Performance Boost

• No bulky WAR deployment—faster build and deploy cycles.

• Optimized rendering since styles and scripts are modular.

• Improved Lighthouse scores and Core Web Vitals.

Easier Upgrades

• No theme migration pain between Liferay versions.

• Client extensions are version-independent and API-based.

• Style Books and Fragments evolve seamlessly with Liferay upgrades.

Better SEO

• Faster page load means improved Google PageSpeed and search rankings.

• Lightweight DOM structure and reduced blocking scripts.

• Enhanced mobile responsiveness with layout flexibility.

Flexibility for Developers

• Decoupled front-end using client extensions.

• Independent teams can manage CSS/JS extensions without touching portal code.

• Enables integration with modern build tools (Vite, Webpack, etc.).

4. Migrating from Theme to Theme-less Architecture

If you’re upgrading from an older version (7.3 or 7.4), here’s a structured migration approach:

Step 1: Analyse Current Theme

• Identify what your theme controls: layouts, colors, JS behaviors.

• Categorize what can be replaced by fragments, style books, or JS extensions.

Step 2: Extract Styles

• Move reusable styles to a Theme CSS Client Extension.

• Reference existing design tokens or create new ones via Style Book variables.

Step 3: Move Layouts to Fragments

• Convert layout templates into Page Fragments or Page Templates.

• Map old theme JSPs or HTML to new fragment composition.

Step 4: Migrate JS Functionality

• Move inline or global scripts to a JS Client Extension.

• Use Liferay’s frontend-js API for portal interactions.

Step 5: Apply and Test Style Book

• Apply your Style Book across the site.

• Use Site Builder → Pages → Look & Feel to confirm visual consistency.

Step 6: Deploy and Optimize

• Deploy client extensions through Liferay Workspace or Remote App.

• Measure page load and SEO improvements using Lighthouse and Search Console.

The breakdown below can help you map traditional theme components to theme-less components.

5. When Starting a New Project

For new Liferay DXP 2025 implementations:

• Skip theme creation altogether.

• Start with Liferay’s out-of-the-box Style Book.

• Extend design via Theme CSS and JS Client Extensions.

• Use Fragments to build reusable UI components.

• Use Master pages to configure header and footer.

This ensures your project stays future-ready and upgrade-proof.

6. Real-World Impact

Enterprises adopting theme-less architecture have observed:

• 30–40% faster page load times.

• Zero theme migration effort during DXP upgrades.

• Higher SEO scores, especially for mobile pages.

• Reduced maintenance due to modular extensions.

7. Conclusion: The Future Is Theme-less

Moving to a theme-less architecture is more than a technical shift—it’s a strategic decision to modernize your Liferay experience.
With improved performance, SEO, and upgrade agility, it’s the future-ready way to design digital portals.

If you’re planning your next Liferay DXP 2025 upgrade, go theme-less—lighter, faster, and built to last.

I will suggest to look at below free courses available.  on https://learn.liferay.com/education/courses  and you explore other courses as well.

Mastering Liferay Frontend Client Extensions

Mastering Liferay Design Elements

Mastering Liferay Pages and Navigation

Foundations of Liferay Frontend Development